Well Orange Slime has been really hung up on a concrete wall this maybe why.

But Trump was not clean as a whistle. Beginning three years earlier, he’d hired mobbed-up firms to erect Trump Tower and his Trump Plaza apartment building in Manhattan, including buying ostensibly overpriced concrete from a company controlled by mafia chieftains Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano. That story eventually came out in a federal investigation, which also concluded that in a construction industry saturated with mob influence, the Trump Plaza apartment building most likely benefited from connections to racketeering. Trump also failed to disclose that he was under investigation by a grand jury directed by the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, who wanted to learn how Trump obtained an option to buy the Penn Central railroad yards on the West Side of Manhattan.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer-Kissinger
Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.-Swift

President Trump has stepped back from declaring a national emergency to pay for a border wall, under pressure from congressional Republicans, his own lawyers and advisers, who say using it as a way out of the government shutdown does not justify the precedent it would set and the legal questions it could raise.“If today the national emergency is border security, tomorrow the national emergency might be climate change,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, one of the idea’s critics, said this week. Another Republican, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, told an interviewer that declaring a national emergency should be reserved for “the most extreme circumstances.”

Mr. Trump, who according to aides has grown increasingly frustrated over the refusal of Democrats to bend and sees the shutdown as a road with no off-ramp in sight, hinted on Friday that the warnings were having an effect. “What we’re not looking to do right now is national emergency,” he told reporters gathered in the Cabinet Room as the shutdown approached its fourth week. Minutes later he contradicted himself, saying that he would declare a state of emergency if he had to. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, have proved immune to Mr. Trump’s threats, the idea of using the president’s constitutional powers to declare an emergency has received close scrutiny in the White House because it would enable Mr. Trump to obtain the $5.7 billion he has sought for construction of a wall without the approval of Congress.

Instead, Mr. Trump would use his authority to transfer funds to the wall that were appropriated by Congress for other purposes. Toward that end, the Army Corps of Engineers has been directed to study whether it can divert about $13.9 billion in emergency aide set aside for Puerto Rico, Florida, Texas and California. And with the money secured, the president could drop his opposition to the appropriations bills whose passage would end the shutdown.

That would allow Mr. Trump to say he had never backed down from his fight with congressional Democrats or abandoned his pledge to build the wall even if the construction became tied up in legal challenges.

Former White House aides, who noted that Mr. Trump did not focus on the wall during the first two years of his presidency, said the optics of fighting for the wall were more important to the president than erecting it.

As he searches for a way to end the political stalemate with Democratic lawmakers, Mr. Trump is finding himself boxed in, in a familiar position when it comes to immigration issues. Former aides say that is because he conflates legal and policy issues with public relations campaigns and does not anticipate an endgame.

A core group of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus is urging President Donald Trump against the explosive step of declaring a national emergency to build his wall.

Multiple Republicans in the conservative group have privately raised their concerns with the Trump administration, fearing it would lead to a years-long legal standoff that Democrats could win while setting a dangerous precedent for the presidency, according to more than a dozen lawmakers and GOP aides. They want Trump to hold out for a deal with Democrats, regardless of how long the partial government shutdown drags on.

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), one of two increasingly lonely libertarians in the House of Representatives, had a crazy idea Wednesday morning in the wake of President Trump’s unpersuasive prime-time speech about border wall funding and the government shutdown: Have the House and Senate hash out a spending bill, send that bill to the president, and if he vetoes it, they can override, or not. “This is our system,” Amash tweeted, with the slightest hint of desperation. “We should follow it.”

What an intriguing concept: Congress could do its job and ask the president to do his. Not that it will happen anytime soon. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) made that clear in an interview with Sean Hannity on Tuesday night, ceding the Senate’s legislative function to the erratic executive-brancher he once described as “the world’s biggest jackass.” “If we undercut the president,” the senator warned, “that's the end of his presidency and the end of our party, and we deserve to be punished." The combination of an aggressive president and a supine Congress has rendered pathetic many a legislator who were once afforded at least some respect. Graham arguably leads the pack. "This is the most presidential I have seen President Trump," he told Hannity. "It was compelling and everything he said was true." I’ve seen more convincing hostage videos.

And it’s not just old Republican hawks displaying constitutional obsequiousness to a man who chafes daily at what checks and balances still constrain the presidency. Many of the same young Freedom Caucus representatives who came to Congress spitting fire about Barack Obama’s executive overreach are now running interference for Trump on Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation. Former Sen. Bob Corker, also a Republican, came up with a most memorable phrase to describe this hibernation by the legislative branch when he accurately accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel (R-Ky.) last summer of blocking almost all amendments and proposed bills out of fear that “we might poke the bear” residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. "The United States Senate right now…is becoming a body where, well, we'll do what we can do, but my gosh, if the president gets upset with us, then we might not be in the majority,” Corker said.

Sooner rather than later, we’re going to need Senate Republicans to reanimate their bear-poking muscles. If the country’s most influential conservative follows through on his threats to declare a national emergency on the border, deploy additional military on U.S. soil, and go on an eminent domain spree at the expense of Texas ranchers, then it’s going to take more than court challenges to thwart the abuse. But even before we reach a genuine constitutional crisis, whether through authoritarian power grabs or whatever comes next in the Mueller investigation, Congress needs to resolve its own self-made crisis of deferring decision-making authority to the president. The U.S. is fighting undeclared wars all over the globe, the legislative branch hasn’t passed a proper budget in more than two decades, and the Senate can’t even screw up the courage to limit the president’s flagrantly bogus “national security” justification for imposing dumb tariffs.

So embedded has congressional cowardice become that in one of the last acts of his disappointing career, former House Speaker Paul D. Ryan actually smuggled into a farm bill a provision barring the lame-duck Congress from exercising the War Powers Act “with respect to Yemen.” Yes, in the farm bill. In response, the House’s other lonely libertarian, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), infuriated his colleagues by demanding that every subsequent vote in the 115th Congress be counted, rather than rubber-stamped via unanimous consent. It has gotten so bad that your elected representatives don’t even want their votes to leave a paper trail. Meme-inducingly robotic as they were Tuesday night, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) were right on their essential point: The government shutdown ends tomorrow if McConnell merely resubmits the same continuing resolution the Senate passed unanimously in December, and then senators vote the same way they did three weeks ago.

But Mitch won’t poke the bear, at least not until more than a handful of Republican senators are willing to force his hand. What about that new guy, handsome fella from Utah, who made waves in Washington last week by vowing to “speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions”? Reported the Deseret News after Trump’s address: “Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, was silent Tuesday night.” Until Senate Republicans rediscover their tongues, let alone spines, their claim to “constitutional conservatism” should be greeted with hoots of laughter. This is our system. We should follow it.

“Here’s what will happen if there’s a vacancy — there will be a lot of pushback from the left,” Graham replied. “But my Democrat colleagues felt, when they were in charge, we should confirm judges by a majority vote. They changed the rules to accommodate President Obama, they tried to stack the court, they never thought [Hillary Clinton] would lose.”

The South Carolina Republican vowed that the rule change by Democrats would “come back to haunt them.”

“I will urge the president to nominate a qualified conservative,” he said defiantly. “Hopefully that person will get through and I expect it to be along party lines. And this is what happens when you change the rules. This is come back to bite ’em, I predicted it would and we’ll see.”

“I’m going to be hellbent to replace [with] a conservative whoever steps down for whatever reason,” Graham added.

Wallace noted that replacing Ginsburg with a conservative justice would “make the Kavanaugh hearings look like a tea party.”

“They should have thought of that before they changed the rules,” Graham snapped. “They tried to destroy conservative judges, I voted for [Sonia Sotomayor] and [Elena Kagan] understanding what I was getting.”

“I am dead set on making sure it’s a conservative nominee,” he insisted. “Elections have consequences. The rules of the Senate were changed, not by me! By them! And [Republicans] had to [change the rules] on the Supreme Court because they would not give us anybody and Kavanaugh was a fine man. They tried to destroy him.”

Before ending the interview, Graham demanded to say one more thing.

“We don’t need one Democrat to replace a liberal justice and the reason that’s the case is because what [former Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid did,” Graham said angrily.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer-Kissinger
Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.-Swift

Yeah, they just want absolute power. Since Newt Gingrich, they have been an anti-democracy force. They have called moderate Republicans RINOs and called Democrats traitors. Only their extreme views (not usually traditional conservative views) are "Republican".

It took several years for them to become powerfully pro-authoritarian. They blocked all Obama judges until they couldn't. They screamed about extreme liberals and communism but acted as authoritarians. Most of their supporters (35% of the country?) want that strongman rule.

It is a sad time, but it will pass - some day. It might take two years. It might take generations.

Russia basically had 6 months of Democracy in 1917, and 10 years (more or less) between the collapse of the USSR and the rise of the newest tsar, Vladimir Putin.
The Philippines have occasionally had Democracy since the USA owned then liberated the islands, and they keep electing dictators, from Marcos to Duterte. Pakistan's Democracy has pretty much always been a farce.

Venezuela, Poland, Turkey, Hungary, India, and Brazil all keep throwing their Democracies away by electing dictators. Even in Western Europe, after 74 years of peace, prosperity, and unity, is seeing the rise again of would-be (or real) fascists in Germany, the UK, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, as well as the Southern European states of Greece, Spain, and Portugal. Australia, while retaining its Democracy, has always been a racist society and is keeping political refugees seeking asylum imprisoned without trial for years on an island off the coast from the mainland.

Even Canada, even more a bastion of reasonableness and Democracy than the USA, is facing a rising popularity of racists and fascists. So is it any surprise that at least 35% of Americans are not just willing but EAGER to throw away EVERYTHING America stands for (or claims to) in order to "save it" for White, fundamentalist, "Christian" talibanistas?

This, of course, despite the fact that for 2000 years openly, blatantly un-ecumenical "Christian Nations" under "Christian" kings have been a blight on the world.

"Fascism comes along when the rich people get the generals to help them stay in control." -- Woody Guthrie
My son says: "Don't argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience!" -- YT

Trump has a long history of using mobcrete in his buildings. It's a great way to launder money for the mob, especially if you charge 2x the going rate and then substitue 2x the aggregate. At least then, refugees would be able to bust through the mobcrete with a ball peen hammer.